Preface
A photograph is more than just an image, it’s a story frozen in time waiting to be revealed. The focus of this paper helps shed light on the stories captured in the Vietnam War photos. Military reporters and civilian reporters went to extreme lengths in order to capture these striking images from both the American and South Vietnamese side of the war and the North Vietnamese side. These long
images after
the
continue end
of
the
to
speak
war
captur-
ing a time most individuals will never see. The photographs of the Vietnam war was a powerful tool, used to help either spur on troops and boost morale or help to destroy and dash the hope of others allowing them to see impending suffering for them. The photography of the aftermath of the battles won and lost, found its way to the public of major participants of the war, and in the United States of America it spurred protests and anti-war movements that even spread to troops on the ground in Vietnam. The bulk of this research came from interviews, with photographers that were on the ground,
newspapers
and
autobiographies,
websites and articles related to the war.
Introduction
4
Western Photographers in the Vietnam War Tim Page
8
Eddie Adams
10
Don Mcullen
14
North Vietnamese Photographers in the Vietnam War Van Bao
20
Doan Cong Tinh
22
A Modern Photographer views the Changes of War Photography
28
Supplementary Information
34
The Vietnam War was bloody, dirty and highly unpopular.
U.S soldiers were fighting against an en-
emy they rarely saw, in a jungle they could not master and for a cause they themselves barely understood. The Vietnam War Photography offers a glimpse of the plight of these soldiers during the Vietnam War. “No war was ever photographed the way Vietnam was, and no war will ever be photographed again the way Vietnam was photographed,”-(Hal Buell, who ran The Associated Press photo service for 23 years) “There was no censorship. All a photographer had to do is convince a helicopter pilot to let him get on board a chopper going out to a battle scene. So photographers had incredible access, which you don’t get anymore.” This indeed does show that the Vietnam War was a turning point for many photographers and even photography itself.
Photography had come
a long way since its start. Exposure times were a lot shorter, and cameras more compact, this meant a photographer could more readily whip out his camera and start capturing his surroundings. During an interview with Mike Toy, who currently lives in Barbados he related his opinions of those photographers that do indeed go to war torn areas to photograph them. He related that those photographers exhibit a need for a rush, accompanied with impulsive behaviour. Many photojournalists from the invading forces found this however, to be a rush, in which case they figured they could go find the next best thing to photograph the most dangerous scenes they could possibly get into so that they could make the most money possible. The Vietnamese photographers entered the battlefields with the same ideas in their minds as the photographers of the other side their views were both naïve, they knew they had the duty to photograph the movement and the unification of their country and the knew the photographs will later have great impacts on persons within the later unified country but underestimated it. One
of
such
photographers
4
was
Tim
Page.
“No war was ever photographed the way Vietnam was, and no war will ever be photographed again the way Vietnam was photographed,”
“There was no censorship. All a photographer had to do is convince a helicopter pilot to let him get on board a chopper going out to a battle scene. So photographers had incredible access, which you don’t get anymore.”
6
Western Photographers in the Vietnam War
TIm Page
May 25th 1944 He was born May 25th 1944 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. He was made famous in the Vietnam War through his outrageous behaviour. Tim Page can be said to be a living martyr of War Photography, Page was hit 4 times during the War, the final time he was hit shrapnel went right through his head, and approximately 20% of his brain had to be removed in order to save his life. Tim started his life wanting to be in a fighter pilot. When he was 6 years old he discovered that he was adopted, and he knew nothing about his birth mother. Page was an accident prone child, accidents ranging from hospital burns to a serious motorcycle accident that almost left him dead by the age of 16.He then ran away from home one year later and found himself in Laos. He was immediately seduced by the excitement and lethal beauty of War, being able to witness the coup d’état that was happening around the same time. It seemed that photography was yet another accident that happened to Tim, but this time it seemed like a good one. In Saigon Tim attached himself to some civilian freelance photographers that were willing take outrageous risks to make a name for themselves, make some cash, and above all, to make great images.Tim described it as one huge party the excitement was exhilarating. Tim chose to be Vietnam, he had the chance to go home at any time, but he stayed evidently for the rush. Page relates his first experience with combat in early 1965. He explained he had no idea what he was doing, “I was so green I was not even coming out of the ground”. Tim was on patrol with a group of South Vietnamese and an American advisor where they captured a Vietcong insurgent. From across the bush he could see the interrogator and American advisor with the Vietcong suspect, what he then sees scares him. “You don’t believe……now I freeze and say, God I mucked up, I screwed up” Tim’s emotions as he relates his reaction, he couldn’t believe what he saw. Tim couldn’t snap a single frame of what he saw. He knows though that is role was pointless unless he was able to take images of what he saw around him, and the next time something like this happened, he promptly took images of it. In his words he “worked the camera silly”.
8
“I was so green I was not even coming out of the ground”
Eddie Adams
June 12th, 1933 A simple search of his name in Google, and this is the first image that appears, it’s iconic photographs like these that stirred the public image of the war in Vietnam, changed their thinking from it simply being a war waking place in a remote part of the world, to a situation where not just people, but individuals were losing their lives. Who was Eddie Adams? He was born June 12, 1933, in New Kensington Pennsylvania USA. While in high school in New Kensington he joined the photography staff of the school newspaper, and after graduation he enlisted in the Marines and served for three years as a combat photographer in Korea. He rean
entered
the
War.
Over
Vietnam his
a
lifetime
veteran he
photographer
would’ve
of
covered
the 13
Kowars.
It was in Vietnam though that he took thephotographs that would change his career. It started as he was in the city of Saigon, Eddie was following a suspected Viet – Cong guerrilla that was captured of the South Vietnamese Chief of Police, he figured to himself, he would walk behind and happily snap photos of the prisoner, just as he would if someone were arrested in any other city, but things suddenly changed, the Chief of Police took his pistol out and readied it, and shot the prisoner in the head, all of this happened as he was happily taking photographs, he couldn’t believe what just happened, and more so , couldn’t quite picture in his head what he had captured on his camera. He looked away as the blood spewed out its victim and the bullet did its job, he was too in shock to continue taking photographs and later took some more shots as the blood calmed down and the man lay dead on the road. The image went global. This wasn’t just any image of a dead man, but the image of a man on the line of death and life. An image like this showing up on the newspapers, the 6 o’clock news and the in other sources of media; sent the world in an uproar. It could be said that the image not only destroyed the life of the South Vietnamese officer but also stirred a desire for the public to try to end the war.Eddie finished his tour in Vietnam after successfully documenting what he thought to be important. Returning home he saw the images yes, but they didn’t seem to have an effect on the general public. Actually it was as though he came from a different world to another that didn’t understand the concept of pain and suffering he experienced for months in Vietnam. He couldn’t relate to what was going on in the US. He took a second Tour to Nam. This time he was able to take a series of photographs that were more constructive than destructive. His photographs of the “People in Boats.” Normally when photographing children in any state whether in a park or in a war torn country, children always seem to have a bottle of happiness left within them, but Eddie saw something different happening here, he noticed no one was smiling this really drove home the severity of the war. This laid the ground work for a massive immigration of more than 200,000 South Vietnamese refugees into the US securing their safety. 10
“he figured to himself, he would walk behind and happily snap photos of the prisoner, just as he would if someone were arrested in any other city�
“People in Boats.”
12
“Too Hot, Too hot”
Don Mcullen
October 9, 1935
He grew up in London; born in the 30s and bombed in the 40s he called himself a product of Hitler. He was exposed to films about violence from an early age. He remembers his father speaking about a severed head that was discovered after a Nazi air raid in the city, the head was being passed around in a box by the air wardens. Violence at an early age robbed not only him of his childhood but an entire generation. Playing in bombsites and hunting shrapnel or foil dropped from German bombers. His second home was the pungent smelling bomb shelters he and his family shared. Growing accustomed to the odour he grew fond of it. As the bombings grew worse, he was faced with evacuation him and his sister would be sent to differing families. Pure luck paved their futures, while his sister was sent to a posh upper class family while, Don was sent to a poor farming family where he was he was cruelly beaten. These events caused him to ask questions such as “why are some people born fortunate and others not ? “, “why do people suffer because of where they were born”. His photography is also affected by the events of his childhood. The way he developed the photos where again expressing his feelings on the inside. When asked why are all his photos are so dark, he explained “there is nothing bright in the world.”
14
“there is nothing bright in the world.�
Their take on a life was different from that of the average person, they thought of life as a big game. This actually was a common characteristic of most photographers found in war zones, similarities to, persons like Tim Page discussed earlier, Robert King and Don Mcullen and also that of the North Vietnamese photographers. They all treasured their photographs over their lives.
16
“Until you’ve been on the edge, until been at that point to witness the most profane, the most perverse the most obscene, until you’ve got that point, you can’t talk about it , and once you have, the only people you can talk about it to, are the people that have been there too” – Tim Page
On the part of the north Vietnamese Photographers they too wanted to make good photos, but their purpose was much different, their photographs were to be used as weapons to help win the war, they would sacrifice anything and endure anything to get these photos 1 out of 3 north Vietnamese photographers would die in the war attempting to capture photographs. Tim Page added there is a deep bond behind photographers, it doesn’t matter the nation or the borders, and this bond is forged from the rigors of war. “Until you’ve been on the edge, until been at that point to witness the most profane, the most perverse the most obscene, until you’ve got that point, you can’t talk about it , and once you have, the only people you can talk about it to, are the people that have been there too” – Tim Page
18
The North Vietnamese Photographers
Doan Cong Tinh
Doan
Cong
Tinh
nicknnamed
“the
king of the Battlefield was 25 yrs old at the start of the war and spent 5 years taking
photos
within
the
warzone)
Tinh was said to be able to capture some of the images that no one was able to get, even if it meant as an officer to have to disobey his orders. Since the Vietnam War he has not taken photographs professionally. He valued the photos that he took during the war, more than his own life. “I was in the army, I was a military reporter but I was also a fighter protecting his homeland. Carrying a camera, like other people carry guns” – Doan Cong Tinh His motive too, was to take pictures the
that
told
war,
everything
quintessential
about images.
The first time facing combat, he nearly lost his life along with the image. He explained that he was overly eager to capture the glimpses of battle on the front lines. Moving through the border of North Vietnam to South Vietnam he was on patrol with 2 other soldiers. Spotted by an American helicopter he found himself feigning death in a bush. His first instinct caused him to point his camera in the direction of the helicopter to take a picture but he was stopped by the soldiers around him, the reflection from the camera would’ve given away their position, Tinh however, made a vow saying that never again would he allow himself to be stopped this was only the beginning of the photos he was going to take. 20
“I was in the army, I was a military reporter but I was also a fighter protecting his homeland. Carrying a camera, like other people carry guns” – Doan Cong Tinh
Van Bao Van Bao was much Different to Doan Tinh, he was a civilian photographer and he never saw front line fighting. “We cannot forget the past, the scars; the losses. We all know each picture has its own value, each costs us something, sometimes its costs us blood that makes it priceless”. – Van Bao As a civilian photographer his assignment was to bring people the news and to inspire them with stirring photographs. In Hanoi many of the Vietnamese ever laid eyes on an American, the only Americans they saw fell from the sky when their aircrafts were shot down but; Van Bao had the opportunity to do so. February 11th, 1965 at the battle of Quang Binh near the border between north and South Vietnam, the second American fighter pilot was brought down, his name was Robert Shumaker, and he was a navy commander. Van was impressed by the American, this was his first time seeing one. He was impressed by the height and the size of the man. Van Bao wanted photograph him when he lowered his head as far down as he could. He froze that moment forever. Van Bao was an idealist; he often searched for beauty at the edges of battlefields, unannounced to him though, beauty was the first casualty of many of the American air raids. “When I look at these pictures, I feel so hopelessly sad; to make these pictures is very difficult. When you took these pictures and you knew you had these pictures.”-Tim Page interviews Van Bao Van Bao broke down into tears during his interview with Tim Page, when he viewed the images he took those many years ago. Clearly the effect of being in the war zone but not only remembering what you saw, but being able to record it, freeze it in history, just as fresh as it was , will recall the feelings initially felt. “This is a hard hitting picture about pain, cruelty and death, I don’t often show it was the 15TH of April 1972 we heard that the Thuong Ly bridge when is about 4km from Hai Pong was under fire from B-52s. We went there nobody was alive except us everybody had been killed, everything had been destroyed. It looked like hell it was so horrible I didn’t want to take any pictures but I had to record what was left by the war. We have to find any way reporters as well as civilians Vietnamese as well as other peoples in the world to prevent war to prevent scenes like this from happening again.” 22
“We cannot forget the past, the scars; the losses. We all know each picture has its own value, each costs us something, sometimes its costs us blood that makes it priceless”. – Van Bao
He was impressed by the height and the size of the man. Van Bao wanted photograph him when he lowered his head as far down as he could.
“This is a hard hitting picture about pain, cruelty and death, I don’t often show it was the 15TH of April 1972 we heard that the Thuong Ly bridge when is about 4km from Hai Pong was under fire from B-52s. We went there nobody was alive except us everybody had been killed, everything had been destroyed. It looked like hell it was so horrible I didn’t want to take any pictures but I had to record what was left by the war. We have to find any way reporters as well as civilians, Vietnamese as well as other peoples in the world to prevent war to prevent scenes like this from happening again.”
He believed the world could be changed as a result of his photographs.
26
A Modern Photographer views the Changes of War Photography
Robert King Another diamond in the rough story begins in 1992 within war torn Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. A young, 24 year old boy walking into an environment most likely about to get himself killed took up the challenge of capturing the imagery of War. A documentary entitled “Shooting Robert King” captured his days in Sarajevo. It starts showing a light spirited boy outside a car describing in great sarcasm a gunfight he and is cameraman survived. Showing the bullet holes riddling the car and even claiming that one of the bullets were lodged within the video camera they were using to film the documentary. Soon though, things got more and more difficult and the initial “rush” soon lost its novelty, hearing the words of solders and other photographers around him claiming that he wouldn’t survive the job he took up really got him stirred on the inside, to finally understand the seriousness of the matter. He appeared in Sarajevo with all the wrong clothes – camouflage trousers, someone tells him, don’t go down too well at checkpoints. White T-shirts, he discovered, made one an easy target for snipers. “Come on, little journalist! Quickly!” shouted one soldier to him as bullets whizz overhead. Cameraman Jeff Chagrin told King bluntly that he didn’t have “the aura of luck”. The documentary really got into the actual life of the “War photography” showing communication between him and his agency. This really brought forward an important skill that most photographers needed. They needed to be fast and accurate, needed to take photographs whilst retreating from danger. This skill, took Robert King quite a while to develop, his first photographs were underexposed and out of focus. Being rejected from the agency he was working for he sojourned on endlessly putting his life at risk trying to find the right photograph. He didn’t have enough money to stay in the same hotel his contemporaries were lodging, but in a way this was a good thing, he would stay with locals he would understand the nature of the conflict the more and more he did so, he would gain an understanding of what needed to be shot. 28
“the aura of luck ?”
Moving from his initial tours, Robert slowly made a name for himself and he also became weathered and he stated that he sometimes have issues of not looking that war in a cynical way, clearly his mind set has been affected by what he has been exposed to over the years. While in Iraq he witnessed a bombing, the pictures of the bombing were important, but the thought that went behind the photographs really drove home a point of discussion within this thesis. “Okay, hold it together, don’t look at the bodies, yes I know it’s an arm and a leg over there, but see them as forms and compose them as forms within an image” The desensitisation of individuals to scenes of violence over exposure for a long time can be a serious issue, and leads to the question : “Does the many years of War photography still achieve the purpose it was supposed to before so many became available?” As Robert King continues this career as a War Photographer, he closed the interview with the idea that he, and other photographers who do the job he does, are here on this earth to convey a message that others would never be able to convey, he stated that a person taking up this career is already mentally broken, or will be at the end of it, and he can attest to this, but this somehow gives him purpose in what his is doing. He is currently in Syria, covering the political unrest happening there.
30
“Okay, hold it together, don’t look at the bodies, yes I know it’s an arm and a leg over there, but see them as forms and compose them as forms within an image”
32
A person taking up this career is already mentally broken, or will be at the end of it, but this somehow gives him purpose in what his is doing.
34
Tim Page’s Contribution
Tim Page’s Contribution
He learned on the job along with help from his mentor Henri Huet, a half Vietnamese and half French photographer and Larry Burrows who was British, both were exceptional war correspondents , who sad to say, later were killed in Vietnam. While in Saigon, Page shared a flat with fellow photographer: Sean Flynn, the two developed a bond like that of brothers but, in 1970 Flynn and another reporter, Danna Stone travelled to eastern Cambodia, and disappeared. Page spent 3 decades trying to solve the mystery. During these 30 years while other photographers were seeking more battles, Page immortalised the spirits of those “on the other side of the war” the Vietnamese photographers and those that died. He eventually solved the mystery of his friend who had been executed by Khmer Rouge. Later that year he founded the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation which sells prints by the correspondents who covered Indochina over the 30 years of conflict, in order to raise money to train young Vietnamese photographers. With the AP photographer Horst Faas, he put together an extraordinary book, Requiem, made up of work by 135 correspondents who disappeared or lost their lives in Vietnam. The work is on permanent display in Saigon, and soon will be in Hanoi as well. Huet and Burrows are among the photographers in Requiem, he saw it as a way of giving back what he was able to live on with. Tim Page’s obsession with remembering the photographers proves that, in my opinion what he went through did have a profound effect on his mind. From being the flustered bushy tail youth running into battle to a scarred man, constantly reliving the battles and scenes that he was exposed to. He spent part of his life after the war in a mental hospital in California. Through his final statements of the interview between him and Gabby Woods he explained about a photographer whom he admired greatly, by the name of Robert Capa, who died when he was 10 years old. Robert’s photos left an indelible mark on Page’s mind and Page may have well turned out to parallel him in some ways. Capa could not settle down outside of war, and moved to Hollywood for a time where he wrote screenplay based on his experiences, Page too wants to do this, and his opinion is that movies are the future, but he has trouble after documenting the Vietnam War, he couldn’t take the reality out of War.
36
Supplementary Photos
Documentaries Keith David, “National Geographic – Vietnam the unseen War”, 2002 “National Geographic Inside the Vietnam War”, 2008 History Channel, “The Vietnam War”, 2008 Walter Cronkite, “The World of Charlie Company”, 1997 Richard Parry, “Shooting Robert King”, 2008 Susan Morgan Cooper, “An Unlikely Weapon: The Eddie Addams Story”, 2008
Bibliography Don McCullin, Unreasonable Behaviour an Autobiography (Donald McCullin 1990, Jonathan Cape Ltd, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SWIV 2SA) Gordon L Rottman, “Khe Sanh 1967 – 68 Marines Battle for Vietnam’s Vital hill top base”, 2005 Osprey Publishing. James R. Arnold, “Tet Offensive 1968, Turning Point in Vietnam” Osprey Publishing, 1990 Gordon Rottman, “Vietnam Airbourne” Osprey Publishing 1990 Charles D. Melson, and Paul Hannon, “Vietnam Marines 1965 – 73” Osprey Publishing Andrew Wiest, “The Vietnam War 1956 – 1975” Osprey Publishing 2002
38
Photo Credits and Sources http://www.vietnampix.com/poppage.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124046305185146795.html http://www.vietnamgear.com/ http://www.cameranaked.com/NikonPhotographers.htm http://www.ucd.ie/photoconflict/histories/vietnamwarphotojournalism/ http://www.ucd.ie/photoconflict/histories/vietnamwarphotojournalism/ http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/vietnam/timeline.htm http://www.npr.org/multimedia/2009/03/vietnam/index.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/world/asia/19timpage.html?_r=1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2001/sep/23/features.magazine27 http://www.union.edu/news/stories/2011/10/term-abroad-students-meetlegendary-vietnamese-photographers.php http://vva.org/blog/?s=unlikely+weapon http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/204511/there-are-tears-my-eyes/ jonah-goldberg http://www.famouspictures.org/mag/index.php?title=Vietnam_Execution http://www.pbs.org/speaktruthtopower/hr_eddie.htm http://www.robertking.org.uk/ http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/a-rare-view-of-conflict-in-syria/ http://www.sportsshooter.com/news/2264 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/arts/20adam.html http://markhancock.blogspot.com/2004/09/eddie-adams-1933-2004.html http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0528.html#article